SujaySarma.Data.SqlServer 8.2.0

Sujay Sarma's SQL Server Client SDK

(SQL Server, SQL Express, LocalDB, SQL Azure, SQL Server on Linux compatible)

About this library

This library simplifies writing data storage and retrieval code against databases hosted on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. You no longer need to use cumbersome frameworks like EntityFramework (EF) to simplify or automate your database interaction and ORM process.

This library is built on the same lines as my popular Azure Tables Client SDK and offers a highly simplified and super-performant structure.

Dependencies

This package depends on the 'Microsoft.Data.SqlClient' library. And uses 'System.Data' and 'System.Reflection' extensively.

Dependability and Trustworthiness

• The codebase is mostly the same as used in the 'Azure Tables Client SDK' (see link above).
• Given that the Azure Tables Client SDK is heavily performance optimized, all the same learnings have been directly applied here.
• A readonly copy of source code is available on request. Drop me an email from the Contact Owners page.

Usage

Write your .NET business object as a class or record. For example:

public class Person
{
	public string LastName { get; set; }

	public string FirstName { get; set; }

	public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; }

	//...
}

Let's say you want to store this object in an SQL Server named People, add the following to the top of your class file:

IMPORTANT: You must create the database and tables beforehand. The SDK will NOT automatically create or manage them for you (unlike the Azure Tables Client SDK) as SQL Server object structure is much more complex than we want to deal with in this library.

using SujaySarma.Data.SqlServer.Attributes;

and add this attribute above your class declaration:

[Table("People")]
public class Person ...

You ideally need at least one primary key for this class/table. To specify these fields, add the relevant attributes from our SujaySarma.Data.SqlServer.Attributes namespace. Let's define our LastName property as the Primary Key:

[TableColumn("LastName", KeyBehaviour = KeyBehaviourEnum.PrimaryKey)]
public string LastName { get; set; }

Just for fun, let's add a property to this class named Hobbies as a List<string>. We cannot store such types directly in the underlying table. Therefore, we need to tell the SDK to magically serialize it to Json and store that Json in the table.

[TableColumn("Hobbies", JsonSerialize = true)]
public List<string> Hobbies { get; set; } = new();

The completed class definition becomes:

[Table("People")]
public class Person
{
	[TableColumn("LastName", KeyBehaviour = KeyBehaviourEnum.PrimaryKey)]
	public string LastName { get; set; }

	[TableColumn("FirstName")]
	public string FirstName { get; set; }

	[TableColumn("DateOfBirth")]
	public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; }

	[TableColumn("Hobbies", JsonSerialize = true)]
	public List<string> Hobbies { get; set; } = new();
}

Let's instantiate an item and provide some data:

Person p = new() 
{
	LastName = "Doe",
	FirstName = "John",
	DateOfBirth = new DateTime(2000, 1, 1),
	Hobbies = new() { "Painting", "Reading" }
};

Now, we need to store this in our tables. The library provides the class SqlTableContext, which provides a "connection-less" paradigm to operate against the underlying Tables API. Initialize it with the connection string from above.

SqlTableContext tablesContext = new("<connection string>");

Of course, you can store the connection string in your Environment Variables or an appsettings.json or the KeyVault or wherever and use it from there.

You can also use the fluid-style initializers:

1. To initialize with local system database:

SqlTableContext tablesContext = SqlTableContext.WithLocalDatabase("TempDB");

2. To initialize with provided connection string:

SqlTableContext tablesContext = SqlTableContext.WithConnectionString("<connection string>");

Insert the item we created into this storage (the method is async):

await tablesContext.InsertAsync<Person>(p);

That's it. Open up the table in your SQL Server Studio, you will find the People table there with the data you set above. Notice how the value of the Hobbies column is the Json-serialized value of the .NET property.

To read it back:

Person? p2 = tablesContext.Select<Person>("SELECT * FROM People WHERE ([LastName] = 'Doe');");

The return of that call will be a Null if it could not find the information requested. Examine the values of the properties in p2 to confirm that all the values you stored earlier have been retrieved correctly.

Asynchronous operations

As of v8.x, the SDK supports async operations via the new xxxAsync() methods such as InsertAsync in the SqlTableContext class. However, do note that the Async fetch operations (eg: SelectAsync<T>) will return IAsyncEnumerable<T> and you need to use your own async foreach() for example to loop through and fetch the results. To help, we do provide two extension methods (they are in the AzureTablesContextExtensions class but will attach to any IAsyncEnumerable<T> instance):

1. async Task<bool> AnyAsync<T>(this IAsyncEnumerable<T> e, Predicate<T>? validation = null)

This method checks if any item in the IAsyncEnumerable matches the provided condition in the same way as the System.Linq method Any() works.

2. async Task<List<T>> ToListAsync<T>(this IAsyncEnumerable<T> e)

This method accepts an IAsyncEnumerable<T> and returns a List<T>. It performs the await foreach() for you.

Some typical gotchas

• When storing arrays/lists/collections of Enums as serialized Json, ensure you set the JsonConverter(typeof(JsonStringEnumConverter)) attribute on the enum definition and not on the property! You set the converter attribute on the property only if it is a single value (not an array/collection).

Powerful features

• You can store almost any type into a table using this library. If it does not store properly, just add a JsonSerialize = true to the TableColumn attribute.

Happy coding!